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The Redolution is Now!

This poster is a part of a series of posters that were created for the M&Ms Elections in 2008 (collectingcandy.com). The M&M Elections were a product of a subsidiary company of Mars Inc. by the name of Masterfoods. This company ran a poll to see which color of M&M would get the greatest amount of votes. In Australia for the election, an advertising agency called Clemenger BBDO sought help from The Craft Shot in New Zealand to create the illustrations for these posters (thecraftshop.co.nz). These series of posters seem to parody events and people within recent history, including Reds poster, which I focused on. There are a couple different parodies that I picked up in this poster, one being that of Che Guevara, and the other being of the Soviet Union era propaganda look. I thought of Che because of the barrette that Red is wearing, it reminds me of some of the iconic photos that one sees of Che. The other is the Soviet Union feel with the massive amount of the color red, the people as the bottom carrying tools including hammers and sickles. The other thing that is interesting are types of people that are represented. They really look like working class citizens and seem to be dressed in a way that would also attempt to convince the viewer that they are Russian. The red flags that the people are carrying also portray similarities to the Soviet Union, as well as the font choice of the words. The other campaign posters including the colors: orange, green, yellow, blue, and of course, red.

I believe that the intended audience was that of those in Australia and New Zealand as these particular M&M’s campaign posters were only produced and advertised in those two countries. I could not find out why the creators of these posters chose these parodies, except Orange, which was referencing the Australian preferential voting system, the subtitle also stating, “Carrying The Nerves Of A Nation” (theinspirationroom.com). I did notice however, that Green, or Miss Green, has a very sexist connotation. She is shown handcuffed to a tree with her leg wrapped
around it, and the subtitle states, “Miss Green, working the polls.” Blue has a very Uncle Sam feel to it, with the patriotic looking images, the eagle on top as well as him pointing both fingers at the viewer. Yellow seem to simply be portrayed as a “family man” or a dateable guy, shown by the images as well as stating that he is “The People’s Candy-date.” Australia and New Zealand were not the only countries that had these M&M Elections, but none of the other countries seemed to have these type of risqué images.